JAPAN WANTS TO SCIENTIFICALLY SLAUGHTER MORE WHALES:
We're starving over here; we need more whale analysis!

Japan wants to nearly double its desired catch of minke whales and start catching humpback and fin whales, in a plan based on Japan's argument that there is a need to increase hunting activities in order to analyze the ecosystem of the Antarctic Ocean. They are SO concerned about whale welfare it just takes away the breath of any merely common sense kind of person.

A whale-fed official from Japan's Fisheries Agency (note: not the World Fishery Agency) rote-recited to a news agency that there was "a need to consider surveying such whales... given that there has been an increase in the number of sightings, since we’re out there every day looking for any excuse to kill whales.” [That last part was mine.]

As it just so happens - and this is pure coincidence - the meat from the minke, sei and sperm whales analytically slaughtered during the sheerly scientific research program is sold commercially. Well cut my flukes off and call me a whale analyst.

Whale meat is seen as a very high-profit delicacy in Japan by well-recompensed but otherwise impartial officials in Tokyo who maintain that the tradition is an important part of the nation's cultural heritage, like placing decapitated criminals’ heads on little elevated platforms along the roads out of Edo. Hmmm… wonder why they don’t do that anymore, that was an even older tradition than whaling…

Story before I got hold of it